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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25138072">Take a Bullet</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/jbsullivan17/pseuds/jbsullivan17'>jbsullivan17</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Soulmates [7]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The 100 (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bellarke, F/M, Pining, soul mark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 11:14:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,088</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25138072</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/jbsullivan17/pseuds/jbsullivan17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’d take a bullet for you,” he said, it just slipped out.<br/>Clarke scoffed. “No, you wouldn’t.”<br/>“No, I wouldn’t,” he amended, but it was a lie. “But I want to want to take a bullet for you.”<br/>“Sometimes I think you’d make a better soulmate than whoever my soulmate is.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Soulmates [7]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1167317</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>108</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Take a Bullet</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Look, I tried getting this out to be 4 posts in 7 day, I clearly failed. I’m blaming work. Anyway, here it is my fourth soulmate fic in 8 days.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There were moments with his best friend where he thought he could be completely honest with her and tell her how he felt. He wanted a life with her, a family, and sometimes he caught her looking at him like she was thinking the same thing. But that was the thing about Clarke Griffin, she could make you feel like the most important person in her life and she did that to everyone. Bellamy knew he was her best friend, she told everyone as much, but it still didn’t negate the fact that she could make anyone feel momentarily important.</p><p>So Bellamy got used to it over the years, he got used to being Clarke’s best friend and feeling important and insignificant all at once. It wasn’t Clarke’s fault, she didn’t even know she had the ability but there were moments where her actions made it seem like she knew exactly what she was doing.</p><p>“I’d take a bullet for you,” he said. They were watching Deadpool for the hundredth time and it just slipped out.</p><p>Clarke scoffed. “No, you wouldn’t.”</p><p>“No, I wouldn’t,” he amended, but it was a lie. “But I want to <em> want </em> to take a bullet for you.”</p><p>He turned his head from Ryan Reynolds listening to Salt-N-Pepa and found her already watching him. “Sometimes I think you’d make a better soulmate than whoever my soulmate is.”</p><p>Bellamy scoffed, knowing damn well that her name was on the sole of his foot and had never shown anyone. He might not be her soulmate and that would break his heart but he was willing to play the game as though he weren’t until they were sure.</p><p>Octavia found out three days after it appeared on the sole of his foot, they were at the beach and he was in a recliner and she just happened to look at the bottom of his foot while walking back to their friends set up and read her name. Up until the arrival of the mark, he and Clarke fought like crazy and it didn’t stop once he found out but his heart kept forcing his mouth to lighten the digs, to say princess endearingly instead of with its usual bite and he knew she hadn’t noticed. There was a time where Bellamy fully despised Clarke Griffin and he didn’t know why his mark appeared when it did, nothing changed between them, he didn’t have some realization about how awesome she was because he already knew she was. They wouldn’t have been friends and spent so much time together if he didn’t think she was awesome to some extent. That didn’t mean he didn’t want to murder her with her <em> too </em> liberal stance on some issues.</p><p>That wasn’t to say that Bellamy was conservative, he was liberal but he saw both extreme perspectives and he found a middle ground. He believed in Black Lives Matter and getting equality for everyone regardless of skin and religion and sexuality. He was aware of what happened in Venezuela when they tore down statues and monuments and “forgot” their nation’s history. They stopped teaching the real history, not that America is too far off from that but kids don’t learn that Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln and all of the nation’s heroes and forefathers  before them owned slaves and it wasn’t being racist, it was normal for the time. That’s not saying that there weren’t racists back then but it was their normal. Those men did great things for this country at a time in history where slavery was more accepted. If they were alive today, it would be a totally different story and none of their views would be valid and none of them would even be remotely close to being able to become president, they wouldn’t be revolutionaries.</p><p>“What’s wrong with you?” Clarke asked one day, three months after the beach when they were mostly through Deadpool, Dopinder just dropped them off at the port.</p><p>“Nothing.”</p><p>“You haven’t fought with me on anything in months.”</p><p>“Maybe I'm tired of fighting.” He shrugged.</p><p>Clarke scoffed. “You’re tired of having an opinion?”</p><p>“I’m tired of always arguing about it, yes.” It wasn’t a complete lie, he loved arguing with her mainly because of how hot she looked when she was flushed and coming up with her next point to make, watching her listen and think simultaneously was such a turn on, it was ridiculous. He just wanted to spend one night with her where he didn’t have to end it with jerking off.</p><p>“Are you sure there’s nothing else wrong?”</p><p>“I don’t lie to you,” he said while amending the statement in his head, <em> unless it’s about my soulmate and my feeling for you… my soulmate. </em>This was getting too complicated.</p><p>Clarke laid down, her feet in Bellamy’s lap, seemingly content with his answer as his hand got comfortable on her calf, the other on the armrest. “Are we watching the second one?”</p><p>“If you want, I go in late tomorrow.”</p><p>Bellamy fell asleep halfway through Deadpool 2 and somehow wound up behind Clarke on the couch. He wokeup long after the movie was over, the Firestick was black and his TV’s “no input” sign dragged across the screen. Their chests were pressed together and their legs entwined and he needed to get out of this before his body became acutely aware that this was Clarke he was cuddling with.</p><p>“Clarke, I need you to get up. You can stay but I need you to let me go.”</p><p>“Bellamy,” she said, still sleeping and it sounded like a moan as she ground her core against his thigh.</p><p>“Shit. Clarke, please let me go. You don’t want this.”</p><p>He would have fought her if it weren’t the fact that she was sleeping and he knew how difficult it was for her to fall asleep. He leaned back as she inches closer to him, their lips too close as her breath fanned across his face. The first kiss was so light he thought that maybe it was an accident and he hated that he was such a weak man that he didn’t shy away or end the scenario. </p><p>Clarke was kissing him. She was asleep but she was <em> kissing him </em>and calling him by name. </p><p>“Clarke!” he exclaimed after she kissed him again with a little more force and she nearly fell off the couch, startled by his outburst but he didn’t want it if it wasn’t real. He caught her before she fell and that somehow brought her closer to him than before. “I’m sorry, I just… were you dreaming about kissing me?”</p><p>“What? No.”</p><p>“Then why did you say my name and then kiss me?”</p><p>“What?” Clarke yelled, pushing away from him and sat up, a little frazzled and very cute.</p><p>Bellamy followed suit and sat up too, watching Clarke like a hawk. “It’s not a big deal. I’ve thought about kissing you.”</p><p>“Even though you have a soulmate out there?”</p><p>“The fucked up thing about this whole soulmates mess is that we won’t know until it happens. It could be next week or it could be in fifty years when I’m half dead or dying from some obscure new cancer. We’ll never know, that doesn’t mean we can’t live our lives and not look back with regrets.”</p><p>Clarke didn’t say anything for a minute and when she did that, Bellamy tended to over think and go over every word he’d just said. He didn’t say anything that he didn’t believe, he didn’t confess anything either. So when Clarke moved, he didn’t realize until her lips pressed against his. He pulled back too  quickly.</p><p>“I thought you said—”</p><p>“I did,” he cut her off. “I just want you to think about it. When your soulmate comes, would I still be your friend if you kiss me right now.”</p><p>“I can’t imagine my life without you and if my soulmate can’t handle the fact that I love you too, then they’re not my soulmate.”</p><p>She loved him? She just said that she loved him and maybe she meant like a brother—no, a friend—but she loved him.</p><p>“I want this. I think we can be mature about it, if either of us meet our soulmate, we stop and we’re okay with it.</p><p>“Yeah,” Bellamy agreed though his heart broke a little. He wasn’t her soulmate, that he was certain of, she would have his name on her somewhere and she wouldn’t be so calm about them kissing or whatever he was agreeing to right now.</p><p>“You don’t talk about soulmates. I know it’s weird, that we meet them and don’t know and then something brings it to light on our skin, are you afraid they’re going to be horrible?”</p><p>“No, I just don’t see the point in talking about it when everyone goes through the motions and it’s still trial and error until it’s a written fact on our skin that we <em> belong </em> to someone else.”</p><p>“They belong to you too.”</p><p>“Not if I’m not their soulmate too. It happens, it happened to my mom and your parents…”</p><p>“My dad’s soulmate died in high school and my parents were happy and maybe finding out about my mom and Marcus put my dad on the road that night, but he wasn’t the one that drove drunk. At least they waited a year before getting together.”</p><p>“I don’t want that. I don’t want to be your dad, I don’t want to love my soulmate and have to watch them love someone else who was a better fit for them!”</p><p>“So you don’t want to hook up with me because the system sucks?”</p><p>“I could easily fall in love with you, Clarke, and I don’t want someone to come along and I have to get over you because they’re your soulmate! I’d take a bullet for you, remember?”</p><p>“So what about me? I can’t be left in the dust if you meet your soulmate?”</p><p>“Of course, that’s going to suck and I don’t know why you’d want to do it. This sets us both up for heartbreak.”</p><p>“Experience and practice. I trust you not to hurt me more than anyone, why wouldn’t I trust you to have casual sex with me for our soulmates?”</p><p>It was another fifteen minutes before Bellamy caved, he hoisted Clarke up and carried her to his bed. As he laid there the next morning, dreading having to go to work in three hours, he kissed Clarke’s bare shoulder and traced his finger down her spine, his eyes following the movement until he saw a small line of black ink at the base of her spine.</p><p><em> Bellamy Blake, </em>it read and his heart stopped. The world stopped and he just stared at it, reading his name over and over in the too perfect cursive writing that all soulmarks were in.</p><p>Clarke started shifting and groaning awake and they were the best sounds he’d ever heard aside from the ones he pulled out of her last night. She reached behind her and grabbed his hip, pulling him closer. “Bell, I’m cold. <em> Please </em>.”</p><p>“You should have put my shirt on before falling asleep,” he teased, getting one last look of his name on her back and closed the distance between their bodies.</p><p>“I was too spent to move, mister,” she reprimanded as he kissed her shoulder.</p><p>“Can I tell you something?”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“I don’t know how to say this without… um, you’re my soulmate.”</p><p>Clarke turned around instantly and glared at him. “What?”</p><p>“Yeah, months ago it appeared on the bottom of my foot and I’ve been successful in hiding it and Octavia found out eat the beach and I just didn’t know what to do about it because we weren’t <em> this </em> and smi convinced myself that I couldn’t possibly be your soulmate. Then I saw your back just now…”</p><p>“My... what? My back? My soulmark’s on my back?” Clarke jumped out of Bellamy’s bed and into the bathroom where he watched her naked body twist and contort to see the reverse soulmark herself. “Uggh! Who is it?” Her fists slammed on his counter.</p><p>“I hate to disappoint,” he told her getting out of bed and pulled his boxers on before walking over to her.</p><p>“It’s you? Thank <em> God! </em> I’m in love with you.”</p><p>“You are?”</p><p>Clarke smiled and nodded vehemently and Bellamy couldn’t stop smiling like an idiot himself as he pulled her into a searing kiss. How did he get so lucky?</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Don’t come at me about the paragraph regarding politics. My friends and I debate from opposite sides and one of us is always in the middle on any given subject. This was one of the subjects. I thought long and hard about this paragraph and it has delayed my posting until MIDNIGHT, afraid of someone screaming at me in the comments for something that I am constantly in talks over with friends and family with very different opinions from each other. I am lucky that I get to have these heated conversations that don't go rather than that. Some people aren’t as lucky and it turns into a brawl. I educate myself on all topics and this one was one that I had yesterday so it was fresh in my mind when I wrote it last night.<br/>That being said, if you don’t know what happened in Venezuela and you think that coming after me in the comments before researching it yourself, just don’t.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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